UPDATE: I am back on the boards..I have been gone a couple weeks now dealing with my post surgical complications. I had my surgery on 7/27 (360 spinal fusion/disc removal) as it turned out my back was much worse than the MR Is showed and the surgery took longer than anticipated. Once the doctor got in there he said my spine was so unstable that when he touched the bones in my spine they moved. In the recovery room I was overdosed with pain medication and stopped breathing, and had to be resuscitated. Then they had to give me the narcotic antidote Narcan....so when I finally regained consciousness I had no pain medicine in my body and was in the most pain I ever thought was humanly possible. My body wouldn't absorb any narcotics until the Narcan was out of my system so my first night after surgery was tortuous and a blur because I had NO pain control what so ever.
Finally when I was sent home 4 days later the very next day I developed extreme swelling at the surgical sight in my back. I was readmitted to the hospital and the surgeon came in and removed 65cc of collected blood. The next day I was sent home again. Only to have the swelling return and this time when I was readmitted to the hospital the surgeon decided that I needed to have drainage tubes surgically implanted so I underwent a second surgery to have the tubes implanted (that was 8/7). I still have the tubes and I continue to drain fluid...thank goodness it's not infected. The tubes will be removed in another week if all goes well. SO that was my surgical experience. I am still in a lot of pain although on a positive note I no longer have constant sciatica pain. It is only intermittent now and is less and less common...so I think the nerves as calming down and I will be relieved of all pain eventually (fingers crossed maybe this surgery will pay off at some point!!:p)

**OK so here's my current problem: Went to the PM doc's office for my regular follow up post surgery. The PA said we would stay at the same dose for 2 more weeks and then start the weaning process to get off pain medicine (which I am very excited about....I so look forward to a life w/o medication). Anyway when I was handed my Rx's by the nurse I noticed they were at half my current dose and for one week (which works out to be 3 days worth of medication). I asked why the change from what the PA and I just talked about and the nurse said they looked back at my records and had no record of my dosage ever being raised. ( the dose was raised over the phone after my surgery because of increased pain after surgery. I called in to the on-call line and was told to increase my dose 50%...that didnt work and I called back and they raised it by another 50% which doubles my orginal RXed amount...make sense?) well they had no record of me ever calling in. Even though I was hospitalized after this dose change and the incresed dose was what was administered in the hospital and my discharge instructions were to continue with current doses (which were the raised doses)....So now I am going to have to wean my self down in order to avoid withdrawls I guess...I have no idea what else to do. My PM doctors office seems to think that I magically decided to double my dose and that I am making up the story that I called in and was told to do so. My husband is trying to talk to them and get through to the doctor but if they have no record they probably wont beleive us....I dont know what to do.They keep asking me the name of the person I talked to but I cant remember. I was in incedible pain, hence calling in the first place so I wasnt in a frame of mind to write her name down. I only went to PM for one month before surgery. I dont know how to prove it. So any input is welcome.

Sorry if this is long and rambling but I wanted to update on my post surgical status to anyone who was curious and also share my current predicament with anyone who can offer advise.

Have a great day!:wave:

UPDATE: After speaking to the PA over the phone I was told how right I was and she apologized for the nurse's oversight. All is corrected and straightened out. Although I have to make a 45 minute drive to their office tommorow with my DH. Oh well...It just goes to show how paranoid those PM people can be. I wish it wasnt like this...but thats life.

Toonces1

08-17-2009 10:53 AM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

Wow, this sounds awful. I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this. I know it would have been incredibly hard for me to deal with something like this. In my opinion, I think you should just tell the doctor that what you currently have is not cutting it. Rather than worry about who you talked to and when you called and raising and lowering the dosages, just try to get your point across that your pain is NOT being managed with what he/she has given you.

It hasn't even been a month and you had terribly invasive surgery, I'm not sure you should even be worrying about weaning off meds altogether yet. There are probably others with more experience here, but I had cervical spinal surgery on 7/6 and I am still on about half the dosage of my post-surgery short-acting meds. I am still on the same amount of my long-acting meds. I had been in Pain Management for about a year before my surgery.

Good luck, I will be wishing good pain relief for you.

Brosiah

08-18-2009 06:23 AM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

Thanks so much for your support. I got it all figured out with the PM clinic. The PA apologized for the misunderstanding which makes me feel a lot better about the whole situation. Anyway, I hope all is going well for you as well!

Executor

08-18-2009 07:47 AM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

WOW.....That's one heck of a story! Sorry that you had to experience all of that. Sounds like torture. I'm very glad though that you got it all worked out.

It's a very good thing that you were your own advocate and stood up for what was right. Many people would have just "accepted" the new script and suffered.

I hope everything goes well for you. I'll be curious to hear how your weaning goes. I hope they will do it slowly and give you time to adjust. That 50% decrease they tried to float by you was way too fast.

Take care,

Ex

Fiona_Jo

08-18-2009 11:05 PM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

I'm sorry about what you went through and I'm so happy to hear you got it all worked out. Wishing you a continued and speedy recovery! :angel:

~ Fiona Jo :wave:

kim46

08-19-2009 05:46 AM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

I'm glad you're ok now too -what a scare.
T

Jema X

08-19-2009 07:06 PM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

Hey Brosiah, I'm so glad that it was worked out for you - I can't believe that something like that can happen when you're so new out of surgery and all that you went through.

I'm afraid that I'm with Ex on the weaning off - 50% are huge jumps. I weaned off my cervical fusion meds 10mg OC every 10 days but still had the same amount of BT meds, just in case. In fact, it's now almost 12 weeks and I still have the same BT meds. Considering that you had a 360, I would recommend talking to your PM about a slower taper. I found that too much pain or doing too much only slowed my recovery.

I'm so glad that you're already getting some symptom relief, that's awesome. Take care and make sure you get enough sleep, ok.

katlovesdogs

08-20-2009 01:44 PM

Re: Update on surgery...Horrible PM nurse

The laat two months I had my BT meds written for 180 instead of 120 ( I every 4 hours WOULD be 6 a day x 30 days 180 ) but it says limit 4 a day 4x30= 120. First month I paid and didn't think about anything thinking it was a boo boo due to the post dated script the month BEFORE due to Doc going on vacation and office closed for 2 weeks, I thought may PA added the additional post dated script total with my regular total . Then last month I took script, dropped it off and went to get it and it was 180 again.I questioned pharacist and she said that was how it was written. So my last PM appointment I asked the PA why my last two scripts for for 180 instead of 120 that I didn't need that many a month and that it causes problems with insurance because Medco has their own idea about what a months supply should be etc. The PA said she was surprised that they even filled it since the script said max 4 a day. She didn't say WHY the one script was written for the additional quantity. I kept thinking it was a TEST to see how long I would take the 180 without saying anything.I probably should have said something earlier about the increase but the 2 scripts were both post dated because of the holiday script I got back in june.Why would the PA think the pharacist not fill it like the PA thought ?